Alumni celebrate 100 years of Wahkiakum schools with a reunion

Wahkiakum alumni from 1945 on up to the early 80s gathered in the Wahkiakum High School gym on Saturday for an All School Reunion. It was also a celebration of 100 years of Wahkiakum and Cathlamet High schools.

Alumni from 1981 to present day were scarce.

It's been 71 years since Vern Olson, Bernice Tover Ellison and Delores Danielson Hanes graduated from high school in Cathlamet, but they never attended the school that stands today.

Ellison, 90, was pleased to be there. She lives in Seattle and still sells Avon.

"I looked forward to coming," Ellison said. "I didn't get to the other one because of surgery."

The "other one" was in 2012 and just like on Saturday, it was organized by Susan McClain Kuhn, who used social media to advertise the event.

The Class of '58 was represented by Larry Hosley and John Pierson and they were giving their former classmate Jim Anderson a hard time. All were laughing.

A reporter was all they needed to tell tales.

"The teacher drew a circle on the chalkboard for Jim to put his nose in," one remembered.

"For how long?" I asked.

"The whole week," the other replied, before bursting into a song he said they had written for someone named Diana. His friends denied any knowledge of such a tune.

They then started laughing about how Jim would erase the circle on the board, draw a new one, erase it again, draw another, and so on, as he quietly shifted under the teacher's nose, to get closer to the window.

The way Pierson and Hosley picked on Anderson, it was no wonder that he had his name written on a name tag on one shoulder and another that said "Don't touch" on the opposite side.

There were circles of people all around the gym, and conversations shifted from the serious to the silly and back again as they remembered funny stories and friends that had passed.

Gary Bergseng, '65, had some words for the younger alums that weren't in attendance.

"You should start coming," Bergseng said. "Getting older isn't for the faint of heart."